7:45 am: In Moscow, war-based art in a painting exhibition
Ukraine, 2023. Russian soldiers pose with their Kalashnikovs and survey a devastated city. The light in front of them reveals a young woman wearing a large flag and a bulletproof vest with the inscription “Z,” a symbol of support for the offensive. Intending to be epic, this collective portrait opens a new exhibition – We Are Russians, God Is With Us – which brings together imposing patriotic paintings in the tradition of realism from the Tsarist and then Soviet eras in Moscow, and aims to shake up conflicting minds in Ukraine.
“Stand there, next to this painting that shows that our victory will be final,” a man with a mustache accuses the approximately forty children in black uniforms, students from a military school, who are visiting the exhibition during a school trip. Among the schoolchildren was Vasily Nesterenko, 56, a master of contemporary Russian realist painting and an artist honored with awards from Vladimir Putin. It was he who painted the picture.
Before everyone takes a picture, everyone smiles at the future soldiers, the painter, with white hair and a cheerful face, answers their questions and makes a comment: “Being a soldier is a lifetime, like being an artist.” The great hall of the Manège, only a stone’s throw from the iconic Red Square, hosts around a hundred paintings by Vasily Nesterenko until June 25, including several monumental paintings celebrating the exploits of the Russian army over the centuries.